Chartreuse ©ephoz
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A mysterious green liquor is making a comeback in New York’s hippest bars and elsewhere in the United States. Chartreuse, a french liquor made by monks, is enjoying renewed popularity due in part to a growing “mixology” scene in the US, where ultra-competitive bartenders are constantly in search of new signature cocktail recipes.
Chartreuse has been made the same way for centuries by Carthusian monks in a picturesque town at the foot of the Chartreuse mountain range in France. Only two of the monks from the order know the ingredients of Chartreuse, and the secret is so highly guarded that the two monks aren’t allowed to travel together.
At the end of 2011, the US was on track to become the second-largest market in the world for Chartreuse, overtaking Spain.
The drink’s popularity in the USA probably also benefited from a throw-away line of a bar banter in Quentin Tarantino’s 2007 thriller, Death Proof.
When a group at the bar asked what they are drinking, the bartender played by Tarantino replies: “Chartreuse. The only liquor so good they named a color after it.”
Read more at news.com.au.